


of mercy and grace

by bobina



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: Character Study, F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-25
Updated: 2015-04-25
Packaged: 2018-03-25 15:44:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3815968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bobina/pseuds/bobina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"She wishes she were above it all. She wishes that she could ignore their righteousness and their mercy. She wishes she weren't like them. It would make so much of her existence so much easier."</p>
            </blockquote>





	of mercy and grace

**Author's Note:**

> A brief character study, because Carmilla Karnstein will not leave my brain.
> 
> Please do not copy/re-post without permission.

_Weak and wide-eyed my pride is swallowed; I’m begging for my heart’s last beat;_

_And I’m repaying all the time I borrowed so forever the sorrow song I’ll sing_

_(Song of Sorrow, Elle King)_

 

~*~*~*~

She doesn’t lose her humanity in a fit of violence, all at once. It doesn’t seep from her in crimson rivers and a stuttering heart. Her empathy, her grace, her care, slip past her fingertips over months and years and decades until she can’t remember feeling anything but apathy and the simplicity of brutality.

She admires their efforts to find meaning, in God, in love. She appreciates their art, their philosophy, the purpose they put into the discoveries of their own existence and the fear of being alone in the world they’ve created. Their blood is rich with it.

But she understands what they do not, can comprehend the world in ways they cannot each time she enters their houses of worship and does not burn or writhe in agony or feel anything at all. There is no one, and nothing, and the fear in their eyes as their blood floods down her throat is all the understanding they will ever receive to that end.

~*~*~*~

She wishes she were above it all. She wishes that she could ignore their righteousness and their mercy. She wishes she weren’t like them. It would make so much of her existence so much easier.

~*~*~*~

She is a creature of habit. She keeps her apartment sparse, orderly. A bag is always packed and ready to go at a moment’s notice. She doesn’t attach herself to much beyond a few texts and a good pair of boots.

She is meticulous when she hunts. She avoids young women when she is on her own, putting even the idea of her mother’s rituals out of her mind as long as she can.

It begins with a conversation, a connection of minds. They are often harried, stressed, rushed. She provides something of a respite, a calm and friendly stranger waiting for the bus, in line at the grocery store, sitting beside them at the bar. She is charming. Flirtatious. Interested. The relief she tastes in them is overwhelming when her teeth finally tear through soft, delicate flesh. It soothes her.

When she cannot be soothed, however, when the years pass all too quickly and Silas University looms ever larger in her mind, she tears through her prey, young and old, strong and frail, their blood staining her skin in rivers. She is chaos, she is uncontrolled fury, yet she is forever at her mother’s beck and call.

~*~*~*~

She promises herself every time that it will be different. She promises herself every time that she won’t come back, or that she’ll distract her mother and frighten away the targets just long enough. She promises herself every time that she’ll be free.

~*~*~*~

Her mother begins to catch on, bit by bit.

She sends Will or one of the others to follow Carmilla in between the rituals. She kills anyone Carmilla becomes even remotely fond of. There is always an alibi: an accident, a suicide. Carmilla doesn’t play along.

She loses her apartment and everything in it to an angry swarm of neighbors and accusations of murder when a mother of three is found in the park after being seen with her the night before. She had considered her, had walked her home with the intention of feeding but changed her mind when Will passed them on the sidewalk. He smiled, and arched an eyebrow. She panicked.

It’s silly, really, but it’s enough.

Her mother insists she stay in the dormitories like a common student. Her roommates and neighbors become the targets, and Carmilla finds it more difficult to foil such simple schemes unnoticed.

So she plays along. Allows this cold peace to settle between them. What other choice does she have? She has never been in control, after all.

~*~*~*~

Laura Hollis is infuriating. She’s eager and curious and far too stubborn for her own good. She makes something like hope bloom in Carmilla’s chest and she’s going to get herself killed.

Carmilla wants to be as far away as possible when that happens.

~*~*~*~

“I deserve better. Betty deserves better. Hell, even _you_ deserve better.”

~*~*~*~

She screams into thunderstorms. She screams until her throat is raw and bleeding. She wishes she could drown in the torrent, wishes she had drowned decades ago in an ocean of blood.

The thunder crashes in her ears, reverberating in her bones.

The rain slithers across her skin, washing away endless days of captivity, endless decades of interment, endless centuries of a life without control, without purpose, without hope.

The lightning blinds her and she blinks away rain and tears and centuries of faces twisted in fear and reprehension and agony.

She screams into thunderstorms and they rumble away. She falls to her knees, hair dripping, hands clutching at grass and mud. She wishes she had drowned.  

~*~*~*~

Her humanity, her compassion, her trust come back slowly, slotting into the broken parts of her like puzzle pieces.

Dark eyes, full of admiration and hope. Fingertips, gentle against the crook of her elbow. Shy smiles that linger.

Laura should be terrified of her. She should look at Carmilla and cower in fright. She should look at Carmilla and see nothing but a monster. But Laura doesn’t play by anyone’s rules but her own.

She is more concerned about hair in the drain than the fact that an undead fiend sleeps a bed away from her own and Carmilla doesn’t want to understand what that means.

Carmilla has killed people for centuries, for sustenance, for her mother’s rituals, for release, but Laura looks at her without judgment. She looks at Carmilla with something like awe and familiarity and the beginnings of devotion in her eyes.

Laura is infuriating and precious and there are a million reasons why Carmilla shouldn’t allow herself to memorize the spray of freckles across the bridge of Laura’s nose, shouldn’t allow herself to be comforted in the casual way Laura hands her a glass of blood in the mornings, shouldn’t allow even a single piece of Laura to slip beneath the surface.

~*~*~*~

“Don’t be an idiot. Of course I’m doing it for you.”

~*~*~*~

Her mouth is full of blood but she is not drowning. Her body aches, muscles pulling on shattered bones and skin singed, tight, stinging pain, but she is alive. Well. Not any less than yesterday.

There are gentle hands on her shoulder, in her hair, and she blinks awake, alert. There are arms around her, then, and she thinks how strange it is to be held, to be touched with such care and such need.

Laura is talking above her, rapid fire, but all Carmilla knows is that she is alive and her mother is dead and for the first time in over three centuries she is well and truly free.

Her mouth, her hands, her senses are full of Laura, and she wonders if this is what happiness is.


End file.
